WP_Query orderby ACF date picker field

• robbertlokhorst

• July 12, 2017 at 11:33 pm

Hello,

I’m trying to order my custom post type ‘training’ by my ACF date field ‘training__date’. This is how my code looks like:

$today = date('Ymd');

// Arguments for the query
$args = array(
  'post_type' => 'training',
  'posts_per_page' => -1,
  'post_status' => 'publish',
  'meta_query' => array(
    array(
      'key' => 'training__date',
      'value' => $today,
      'type' => 'DATE',
      'compare' => '>='
    )
  ),
  'meta_key' => 'training__date',
  'order_by' => 'meta_value_num',
  'order' => 'ASC',
);

$training_query = new WP_Query($args);

The strange thing is that the meta_query is working, but the ordering by date isn’t. Am I doing something wrong? I also tried changing the order_by value to meta_value instead of meta_value_num, but that didn’t make a difference.

The return format of the date field is Ymd.
WP version: 4.8
ACF PRO 5.5.14

Thanks in advance.

• John Huebner

• July 13, 2017 at 4:04 am

change order_by to orderby

• Debbie_W

• October 5, 2018 at 8:43 pm

I have the same issue – also trying to order by a custom date field. So the code looks almost identical. I have orderby written correctly but still have this issue.
I’ve also tried ‘orderby’ => ‘meta_value’ and ‘orderby’ => ‘meta_value_num’ with no difference.
My args are:

$args = array(
‘post_type’ => array( $post_type ),
‘post_status’ => array( ‘publish’ ),
‘posts_per_page’ => -1,
‘tax_query’ => array(
array (
‘taxonomy’ => $taxonomy,
‘terms’ => $term_id,
)
),
‘meta_query’ => array(
array(
‘key’ => ‘date’,
‘compare’ => ‘>=’,
‘value’ => $date_now,
‘type’ => ‘DATETIME’
),
),
‘order’ => ‘DESC’,
‘orderby’ => ‘meta_value’,
‘meta_key’ => ‘date’,
‘meta_type’ => ‘DATETIME’,

);

I’d be grateful if you have any pointers 🙂

• Debbie_W

• October 5, 2018 at 8:50 pm

Okay – I tried this again. ‘orderby’ => ‘meta_value_num’ solved the issue. As long as the date format for this field is set to YYYYMMDD